


Beautiful Loser

by b00ngi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcoholic Dean Winchester, Angst, Basically Dean Winchester drowning in pain alcohol and regrets, Dean can't stop thinking about Sam, Dean is miserable, Dean really fucking misses Sam, Episode: s06e01 Exile on Main St., Gen, Lisa is just there, POV Dean Winchester, Post-Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, borderline suicidal Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:14:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26316265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00ngi/pseuds/b00ngi
Summary: Dean leads the apple pie life he promised Sam. But with time he learns this isn't what living means to him. He just wants to go home now, to his Sam. Who was Dean's home all along and he never knew.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	Beautiful Loser

Sam is gone.

Every morning Dean opens his eyes and it’s the first thought that hits him. The 7AM alarm starts to go off and the beautiful woman by his side wraps her arm around him. He opens his eyes and sees the morning sunlight peeking through the curtains of Lisa’s bedroom. She places a kiss on Dean’s temple. He has to get up and start his day, without Sam. He has to wash up, get dressed, make breakfast, kiss Lisa goodbye, drive Ben to school, head to his job, have beer with his coworkers, live the apple pie life he always longed for, all without Sam. 

Some snippets of visions flash before him sometimes, like the distant memories of a past life. Salt-and-burns, beheading vampires, saving people, hunting things. The impala’s steering wheel under his palms with the endless highway ahead of him. Baby purring under his seat, Metallica blasting from the radio, and Sam’s head leaned against the window, napping peacefully on the passenger seat. Two queens in shabby motels, gambling pool, sipping beer on Baby’s hood, watching the stars. These are all pleasant memories, but they haunt him every day as he faces his reality. His Baby rusting in Lisa’s garage, his brother rotting in hell.

Sometimes he sneaks in the garage when Lisa is out. Removes the tarp and opens the impala’s trunk. Runs his hand along the guns, tries to remember what it’s like to put his finger on the trigger of a salt gun and shoot a spirit. He takes out the small trunk hidden away in a corner, flips through John’s journal. Finds the worn out leather jacket in it, feels the material against his palm. Holds it close, taking in the faint scent of whiskey, blood and gunpowder. He goes through all of Sam’s belongings. Brings out the box they found when they went hunting in their old home in Kansas. He takes out the Winchesters’ family photo, the only one they ever had, and covers his face so the stream of tears running down his cheeks don’t fall on the picture and make it blurry. He sits there like that for a while. Then he puts it all back to where they were, wipes his face and heads out to ask his girlfriend how her day went as he hears the yellow truck rumbling outside.

Dean keeps a gun and a bottle of holy water under his bed. There’s a devil’s trap under the carpet of his front door. He makes sure to check the doors and windows at least three times before heading upstairs. Some days when he’s out till late grabbing a beer with their neighbor, he hears something suspicious in an alley or an abandoned building while heading home, takes out the torch and gun from his pocket and walks silently toward the sound. It always ends up being a stray cat or a possum. Dean knows it would, but he can’t help but crave the rush of adrenaline it gives him. The same old excitement and his heart beating hard against his chest as he seeks the unknown danger lying ahead. But he doesn’t feel the same old heavy footsteps of a 6’4” man matching his pace. At home sometimes he sees a headline on the newspaper that could be a potential hunt, and the words almost slip out of his mouth, “Dude check this out,” but when he turns around there are no grey walls of a sub urbian three star motel, no one burying his head in a mythology book or typing away in a laptop. Only Ben watching TV, and Lisa on the couch with her son, staring back at him with a questioned look on her face, wondering if Dean wanted to say something.

How long will Dean keep running? He can’t outrun his past. He can’t run from who he is. He let go of his past life, the life that vanished into thin air the moment Sam fell. When he drove up to Lisa’s house half out of his wits with grief, and they took him in, God knows why they did. He entered that house leaving everything behind. The hunter Dean Winchester, eldest son of John and Mary Winchester, died that day. Sam took Dean with him when he fell. He took Lucifer, he took Michael, and he took the part of Dean that made him who he was. The man walking earth looking like Dean is an empty shell, like a body without a soul, as Sam and Dean had always been two bodies but one soul. They completed each other like two pieces of a puzzle. Sam is gone, a part of Dean’s existence is gone, all that’s left is the promise he made on their way to Detroit one year ago. He couldn’t keep Sam, the least he can do is keep his last wish. And that’s why Dean does not take a gun and shoots himself in the head right now like he wants to. He chooses to live on, like Sam would want him to.

Dean tried. He gave it his all to blend in. He started attending barbeque parties, playing golf, took Ben to soccer practice, went to see movies with them. He likes to believe he succeeded. A house with a green lawn and picket fence, a stable job, good neighbors, a woman and a kid. He’s practically respectable. He has everything he ever wanted. When he went to heaven, this is what he saw. He saw his home and his family, and now he does have a home and a family. Yet he feels so alone. Every face he sees around him looks like every other one, all the same, faces of strangers. He has everyone, yet no one in this whole wide world. No one else carrying the Winchester name, no one with the same blood as him flowing in their veins. How wrong was Dean to think home was meant to be something with a roof and four walls. Home means people, the people who can make you feel like who you are. It’s a place where you belong. Home is everything you ever loved and you ever will. Dean was home all along, and he was so, so stupid that he never even realized it. He knows it now, but at what cost?

His friends and neighbors would say Dean is a happy man. He makes it seem so at least. They don’t know how every once in a while he drinks his weight in liquor till he collapses on the floor, sobbing like a child, calling out his Sammy’s name. Begging to see him one more time, to see him smiling one last time. Screaming complaints, how dare he leave him alone in this empty, miserable world, how could he take the only thing he ever loved away from him. He yells at God, spits at the angels and the demons, he shatters the bottle of alcohol in helpless rage and curses himself. For not saying yes to Michael when he could, he’d be with Sam right now if he did. He’d be in the cage of Satan himself, but he’d still be with his family. He’d be home. He went to hell for Sam once, and he would do it again. Then why didn’t he hold onto Sam when he fell? Why couldn’t he jump into the pit with his brother? He was supposed to look after him, to be there for him no matter what. Since the day mom died his father drilled it inside his head, “Look after your brother Dean. You have to protect him. No matter the choices he makes, no matter where he decides to run off to, watch out for Sammy.” And Dean couldn’t do any of that. He was so blinded with his pride and his obsession to do the right thing, he forgot his purpose, forgot what he lives for. How could he let this happen? Would dad let this happen? John died for them, went to hell for them, got tortured for centuries. He never broke, not once. He protected his family till death and beyond. Dean broke so easily. He shed blood in hell and broke the first seal. He’s the one who started it all, he let Lucifer out, he let the devil take his brother, he let Sam jump in the cage. And Sam? He took back control from Satan and sacrificed himself to save humanity. Everyone in his family died for the family. Is Dean even worthy of the Winchester name? Could he ever do what mom, dad or Sam did if he were in their place? Dean feels like a pathetic disgrace. Every fiber of his being wants to die and he knows he deserves it. He deserves the emptiness in his heart eating him from the inside. The sweet release of death ain’t for him. He has to carry his agonizing life, the life that has everything yet nothing, till the very end. That’s his punishment for not fulfilling his duties. For letting Sam slip away from him.

He lets these thoughts run wild in his head till he can’t think anymore. He can’t feel the shards of broken glass piercing his skin or the spilled drink soaking his shirt. Can’t hear Lisa’s footsteps approaching, holding him up and calling his name. He holds onto Lisa and stumbles upstairs. She puts him in bed and pulls the sheets over him. She lies down next to him and holds him close, whispering things and soothing touches. Dean doesn’t feel any of that. He only feels the feeling of half of his heart being ripped away from his chest. He only thinks of his Sam, his real home. And he waits for the thoughts to be taken over by the bliss of unconsciousness. He waits for the sun to rise again, the start of a new day in his normal, apple pie life. A life he’s not meant to live, but he decides to anyway. For he has promises to keep.


End file.
